"We Can't Scale 5x on Excel Spreadsheets": How Octonomy Built Forecast Accuracy After €20M Raise
"I need one place where I have information about my deals, where I can see what's in pipeline, what reps are saying about their forecasts, and what the data says about deal health," Frank recalls.
Company: Octonomy
Industry: Enterprise AI Platform
Team Size: 30+ Go-to-Market employees
Challenge: Scaling with 5x growth targets while maintaining forecast accuracy, removing admin work from the sales reps and increasing data accuracy
Solution: Kickscale's AI-powered revenue intelligence platform
The Challenge: Growing Fast Without the Right Infrastructure
When Frank Piotraschke joined Autonomy as CRO in January, he inherited an ambitious challenge: scale revenue 5x in a single year while building the go-to-market organization from scratch.
"We're operating under the principle that every quarter is the most important quarter in company history," Frank explains. "We had large funding rounds, which came with very large goals."
But Autonomy faced critical operational gaps:
No Single Point of Truth
The team was juggling multiple disconnected systems:
- HubSpot for CRM (which Frank describes as "built for marketing, not sales")
- Attention for call recording
- Excel spreadsheets for forecasting
- No unified view of pipeline health or deal progress
"I need one place where I have information about my deals, where I can see what's in pipeline, what reps are saying about their forecasts, and what the data says about deal health," Frank recalls.
Forecasting in the Dark
With 10 AEs in Germany, 10 SDRs, and expansion into the US market, Frank needed reliable forecasting at multiple levels like individual seller, team, and company-wide.
GDPR Compliance Concerns
Operating in the German B2B market, especially selling to mid-market companies focused on data protection, meant standard US tools weren't acceptable.
"We're in the AI space, selling to the German Mittelstand. We have emotional debates about data protection. When you deploy American tools like Gong, it's always a bit difficult."
Why Kickscale: Speed, Flexibility, and European DNA
Frank evaluated several alternatives, including continuing with Attention, migrating to Salesforce for Clari, or implementing Gong. Kickscale won for three critical reasons:
1. Built for HubSpot
"You positioned yourselves very smartly in the HubSpot space. If you have Salesforce, you can look at a huge implementation ecosystem. But for HubSpot, there's relatively little. That was smart positioning."
2. Willing to Grow Together
"We're a special bird… we have huge requirements. We're ambitious but early-stage. Not everyone wants to deal with that. You were able to understand us, accompany us, and quickly develop functionalities that are essential for us, like forecasting."
3. European-First Approach
"I know how it feels as a small European company competing with large, well-funded, professional American companies. What you bring to the table is speed, customer understanding, local expertise, and dynamism."
The decision came down to trust and partnership: "Who is willing to adapt to us a bit? You understood us, and you were able to support us."
The Implementation: Stakeholder Alignment
Frank didn't make the decision alone. Kickscale needed to win over multiple stakeholders:
The Sales Team (AEs)
- Need: Fast, simple forecasting that doesn't slow them down
- Result: Integrated forecasting directly in their workflow
The SDR Team (Marketing)
- Need: Pipeline analytics and lead attribution
- Result: Full visibility from marketing lead to closed deal
Product Team
- Need: Understanding how products are perceived in demos
- Result: AI-powered insights from call recordings showing what features resonate
Revenue Operations
- Need: System that integrates with HubSpot without requiring Salesforce migration
- Result: Single platform connecting all revenue data
"The final decision came to me, but I wouldn't have made it if I didn't get green lights from everyone. Moritz from Revenue Operations saying “this works, we can implement this.” The AEs saying '”this is what we need, this helps us forecast.” All those green checkmarks allowed me to say: alright, then let's go, let's buy this."
The Results: Clarity, Speed, and Accountability
Single Point of Truth Achieved
"I describe you as a courageous tool provider who understood that Revenue Operations needs a single point of truth above the CRM system. That basic functionality, demo recording with AI, works very well. And you have high speed on the other building blocks."
Forecasting That Works
Kickscale enabled multi-level forecasting:
- Individual seller level
- Team level
- Pipeline forecasting (leading indicators)
- Revenue forecasting (lagging indicators)
"We're even forecasting pipeline because pipeline is the best leading indicator you have to predict whether you can hit your target or not."
AI-Powered Discovery Insights
Using custom prompts, Frank's team can instantly see if sellers are following the Proactive Selling methodology:
"We can very quickly see whether the structure we prescribe for deals is actually working. Through well-formulated prompts that our market leader puts in, we can see this in a structured way for all deals. The AI is instrumental for this. The prompts we can standardize for every deal, that's totally important."
Team Adoption
Despite initial resistance the team came around:
"You went very quickly to address questions, offered a lot of help, and we got the team onboard relatively well."
Who Should Consider Kickscale?
Based on Octonomy's profile, Frank sees Kickscale fitting best with:
- Companies with 200-300 employees
- Digital products with fast sales motions
- Sales-led growth organizations
- Teams on HubSpot Or Salesforce)
- Fast-growing teams with ambitious targets
- European companies needing GDPR compliance
About Octonomy
Octonomy is the leading AI platform for complex knowledge, backed by top-tier European investors. The company helps enterprises leverage AI to unlock insights from their most complex data sets. With offices in Germany and the US, Autonomy serves mid-market and enterprise clients across Europe and North America.
About Frank Piotraschke
Frank brings 15+ years of revenue leadership experience scaling B2B SaaS companies. Before Octonomy, he was CRO at SoSafe for 5 years, scaling from €1M ARR to unicorn status with 500 employees. He previously held leadership roles at StaffBase and learned his craft at Optimizely, working with VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures.
His philosophy: "As a sales leader, you have two roles: you have to forecast, and you have to recruit. Everything else follows from those."
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See how Kickscale can help your team forecast accurately, coach effectively, and close more deals… all while staying GDPR compliant.
"I needed one place where I have information about my deals, where I can see what's in pipeline, what reps are saying about their forecasts, and what the data says about deal health"
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